School for Scoundrels
by Mercutio
Summary: AU. Rodney is invited to go to a special boarding school for the gifted.


The School For Scoundrels

It wasn't that Rodney was scared. Other than, of course, a certain healthy degree of paranoia which had nothing to do with fear on his part and everything to do with the unreliability of others.

He'd intended at some point to move out of his parents' house and go to school elsewhere, preferably the best college slash university that he could get into the earliest. Earliest being a more important factor than best, but not so important that he ended up somewhere that, say, focused on the liberal arts.

Rodney just hadn't planned on doing it *this* soon.

After the science fair fiasco -- and, yes, he was still bitter about not winning that as his project had clearly been the best by far -- the first to show up had been the police. Followed by his parents, then the CIA. You'd think that a nuclear bomb was dangerous or something. It wasn't like he'd been able to get hold of any actual fissionables. His parents were still fighting over whose fault he was two days after the incident when She had arrived.

She being the most gorgeous and intelligent woman he had ever seen. The woman of all of his future dreams. Mrs. Rodney McKay to be. Long-legged, with wavy blonde locks and professionally put together, she'd rung the doorbell with briefcase in hand and been immediately been invited in.

Mostly because his father had mistaken her for the psychiatrist his mother kept threatening to call. But that was neither here nor there.

Rodney had been listening into the conversation from the beginning -- ever since he'd seen her walking up to the door, actually. He'd been formally called down to take part in the "family discussion" about twenty minutes into it.

Not that he would have minded if she really *had* been a psychiatrist and been there to critique his lack of age-appropriate social skills or whatever the latest jargon was, but she hadn't been. No, his opinion of her general all around IQ had already been in place by then, because she was a recruiter from an exclusive school in the States and she'd said flattering things about his science fair project -- the first person who had, thank you very much!

Rodney would have followed her anywhere.

What she was offering though was a place at a ritzy boarding school that sounded something like a cross between a prepartory academy (which Rodney in no way needed) and a university. Learn at your own pace, take classes that ranged anywhere from beginning French up to post-graduate astrophysics, laboratories on site, classes all year round with no need to leave for silly things like holidays... everything sounded perfect.

"Oh, yes, we do offer a wide range of courses," the Woman Who Would Bear Rodney's Children said. (She'd given a name, of course, but Rodney wasn't sure what it had been. Anne. Or Megan. Or something like that.) "We believe in a well-rounded education. Our liberal arts equivalence is very demanding. You could say we insist on our graduates being Renaissance men. And women." She laughed.

Rodney was charmed. Despite the part about liberal arts.

"Renaissance," his mother repeated. "In what way?"

"For example, for our students who concentrate on the sciences, we require not only the core disciplines, but also the necessary secondary and tertiary abilities. What good is science without ethics? Without knowing the languages science is studied in? Without being able to put theory into practice? Every graduate is a master in their field, not simply a student."

*And* she had a lovely voice.

His parents beat Rodney to accepting her offer though. They'd heard "all year boarding school" and said yes while Rodney was still listening to the offered amenities. You'd think they were ashamed of having a genius son.

"Just Jeannie all year," his mother had said in an undertone to his father, smiling hugely. Rodney could still hear her plainly. "Can you imagine it?"

"No explosions, no strange smells, no parent-teacher conferences," his father had whispered back, for once in agreement with his mother.

"Not that we don't love Rodney, of course, but compared to this past week, it'll be like a little slice of heaven."

Frankly, Rodney agreed about the heaven part. He wouldn't have to put up with them all year and it looked like he'd get to actually learn something instead of regurgitating stuff in class that he'd known since he was three.

No, it wasn't fear that he felt now, as he was being ushered out of the school's admissions office and into a room with the rest of the new students.

It was, plain and simply, dismay.

"Did you need help?" one of the other students asked him. An older boy, slightly shorter than Rodney, with dark scruffy Einstein hair, glasses and an accent.

"No, I don't need help," Rodney snapped back defensively.

The boy held up the papers he was clutching, as if to ward Rodney off. "No, of course not. I am Wolf. And you are?"

One of the sillier things about the school was their insistence on renaming everyone. Less than five minutes inside the door and he'd been jumped by a guy flailing about with a clipboard and had narrowly escaped being beaned with it when, trying to defend himself, Rodney had knocked the clipboard away from him. The guy claimed that voluntarily touching the thing counted as Rodney choosing a name from a list he hadn't even gotten a chance to read.

Supposedly being assigned a new name was a security feature. Presumably so the children of ambassadors didn't get attacked or other nonsense like that. His year had gotten stuck with animal names.

They were required to use some arbitrary name off of some psycho's little list for the rest of their school year. Rodney couldn't believe it.

On the other hand, it was still better than getting called by his real first name. Meredith. He knew his parents had wanted another girl.

Wolf was still waiting for an answer.

"Um."

"What kind of animal is that? Or should I not ask?"

"Viper!"Rodney said in a moment of panic. "My name is Viper!" That, of course, wasn't his name at all. But he was never ever telling anyone the name they'd actually given him. Not for a dozen Twinkies.

Wolf inclined his head, eyes twinkling as though he'd guessed Rodney's secret. "Viper. Which placement tests are you taking?"

"Placement tests?" Rodney asked blankly.

Wolf gestured behind him and Rodney turned to see two long tables full of stacks of papers. "For your classes. The ones I have taken so far were not difficult, however, there are so many."

Rodney went to browse the piles. Beginning, Advanced and Expert Languages were on the upper lefthand corner of the table. He picked up the beginning test there; he had little interest in languages for their own sake. Math, was after all, a universal language.

There were tests for every subject under the sun. Many for things his school hadn't offered, that he'd studied on his own, or, in the case of the piano, with private lessons. He picked up an Advanced Performance test, which turned out to be a short piece of music that he would presumably have to play. As it didn't look that difficult, he went back for the expert test as well. Rodney had little interest in pursuing the piano -- not after the devastating comments of his tutor on his skills -- but there was something competitive in him that loved a test of his abilities.

For math and the hard sciences, he picked up the expert tests. When he was done, his stack was about 10 inches high.

Rodney took three pencils from the provided stock and went to take a seat. Near Wolf, which was entirely coincidental.

He did, however, return the small, conspiratorial smile that the other boy gave him.

Beginning Languages was the silliest test he'd ever seen. It started:

1. Do you speak English? Please reply with a full sentence.

2. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Bitte antworten Sie mit einem vollst ndigen Satz.

and went on from there.

Rodney filled in the answers for English and French, guessed on the German and left the others alone. If all of the tests were that easy, he'd be done quickly.

The math tests were nearly as easy for him. He moved swiftly through the basic competencies, pausing for thought only once he'd made it through to the equations that took up multiple lines. The applied math was more entertaining, and he completed the physics section with a flourish.

Once he'd turned them in, Rodney was told to wait and, after a few minutes, was called aside to do various practical exams, including the playing of the piano piece he'd been given, conversational French and some work with a telescope. They'd called him Viper, for which Rodney was thankful. He *had* put 'Viper' on all the test papers, but he lived in fear of being called that other name.

Before he knew it, he was being led into a cafeteria and let loose for lunch.

It was crowded; his watch said 12:30 p.m. (He wished New York was in a different time zone so that he could reset his watch. It would have been one more step in actually leaving Toronto behind him. Stupid time zones.) The only one he recognized was Wolf, and he got in line with him, ignoring comments and poking from others.

"Ah, Viper," Wolf said to him, making room for him.

Rodney beamed at him. This school was already proving its superiority. A student body that held someone who seemed to like him was a vast improvement over his previous educational venues.

"How was your morning?" Wolf asked.

Rodney took a tray and silverware. "Busy. Promising. Of course, I aced all of my exams, but I hadn't expected them to have such variety. Or to actually insist on people *proving* that they know a subject before letting them at it. Not that I had any trouble, naturally, but it tells me that I won't be surrounded by nearly as many morons as I was before."

"Modest," Wolf replied, setting his tray down on the metal rail and taking a dish of cottage cheese.

"Why? How did you do? You're not mentally retarded, are you?" Rodney asked, a little horrified that he might have accidentally befriended someone of average intelligence. Wolf was older than he was, which didn't seem to mean much here. Rodney was one of the youngest of the new students.

Wolf gave him a mild look through his glasses, before rolling his eyes. "Joke. They do get humor on your planet, yes?"

Rodney turned down the cottage cheese. There was pineapple in it. Fruit in cottage cheese was wrong. Plus pineapple mocked him. It looked like the poisonous death fruit people were always trying to serve him, even if it wasn't actually a citrus fruit. "Yes, because that was even remotely funny. Do I want to know which subjects you failed at?"

Wolf shrugged. "Oh, stupid classes for stupid people. Mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, English naturally, computers, engineering."

"Hah hah. Very funny," Rodney said, taking a plate of spaghetti. He lost track of Wolf as he leaned in to interrogate the server. "There isn't any citrus in this, is there? Little slice of lemon on the side, something cutesy like that you don't tell people about until they're on the floor gasping for breath and trying not to die?"

The server pointed at the glass. "Learn to read."

In small print, which was entirely the reason Rodney had missed it, was a complete list of ingredients, broken out down to the artificial dye. "Oh. Nevermind."

There was a tug at his sleeve. "Come now before you completely embarrass yourself."

"I didn't-- I wasn't-- it's not like they made that easy to find or anything. And my allergy is serious. I could die."

"Yes, yes, very distressing," Wolf said, leading him over to the array of salads, all also with their own lists of ingredients. "So distressing you forget basics like English."

"I hate you," Rodney said firmly.

Wolf rolled his eyes. "Certainly you do. So who will help you blow up cafeteria lady now?"

"You have explosives?" Rodney asked eagerly.

"What I do not have, we can make, yes?"

"Good point."

After filling their trays, they headed out, toward the tables and chairs.

"Mad scientists?" A woman asked them. "That way. Blue table for now. Remember it for dinner."

"Mad?" Rodney replied, clearly offended, but she was ignoring them. She stepped around them, greeting the next student.

"Clearly you are angry," Wolf replied.

"Wow. English obviously isn't your first language. Mad as in crazy."

"That too."

Rodney glared at him, but Wolf was imperturbable. Grumbling, he took a seat at the blue table.

"If we are mad scientists, what do the other colors represent?" Wolf asked as he opened his carton of milk.

Rodney had coffee, thank you very much. Yet another reason to love this school. Life without caffeine wasn't worth living. One of the things he loathed about being his age was that coffee was treated as a controlled substance. It wasn't like he could drink soda when nearly every one had citric acid in it. "How would I know?"

Wolf gave him a long look. "They are called ears. On the sides of your head? Frequently used for listening?"

"Shut up. I haven't heard anything."

"So you admit to not listening."

"I had better things to do."

After that, Rodney concentrated on eating. The din was incredible. He couldn't imagine being able to concentrate here.

The noise lessened as they ate as more people left than arrived. At about the time Wolf was done with his lunch (and Rodney working on his second plate), an older boy with his hair pulled back into a ponytail came to stand at the end of the table.

"Okay, new mad scientists, listen up. I'm Granite and I'm in charge of you for this week. I get to show you where you'll be living and hand out schedules. As long as you do everything I tell you, you'll be fine."

The boy's superior tone grated on Rodney.

"The rules are as follows. Lights out at ten, no exceptions. You have to keep your area neat and your bed must be made every morning, except on laundry day. No harassment of other students, which includes no yelling, no name-calling and no pranks. Respect the older students. Those of us who have been here longer than you know better than you do. Any questions?" The last was asked with a condescending tone that strongly implied that there had better not be as only a idiot would have questions after he was done speaking.

Rodney scowled and made a hmphing noise.

"You have a comment?" Granite asked superciliously. He checked a list, "Viper?"

"None of that was in the rules I was given about this school. And I respect intelligence, not age. Prove you have a brain and I might listen to you. As it is, I think you're a cretin with delusions of controlling others."

Wolf gave him a tiny smirk.

Granite, on the other hand, was purpling. "I'll have you know that that the assistant to the dean personally put me in charge of--"

Rodney, however, had stopped listening and was finishing off his spaghetti. When he was done, which only took a minute, he stood up and turned back toward the kitchen area.

"And just where do you think you're going?" Granite demanded.

"Back for thirds."

****

Needless to say, that wasn't received well, but Rodney was used to that. A would-be chemist who'd apparently been mistakenly admitted to the school through obvious nepotism rather than scholarship was nothing to Rodney. He'd been used to it since sometime in first grade when he'd realized how far ahead of his peers he really was. (And yes, he'd been *unbelievably* slow in kindergarten not to notice then how stupid his peers were, but that shoe-tying thing had stumped him for a while. But only for a while.) And ever since first grade, he'd been doing something productive with his time when the rest of his peers were out in the rain running around screaming at each other on concrete playgrounds for no apparent reason whatsoever. He didn't do things for no apparent reason whatsoever. Well, not unless you were an idiot. Rodney of course, was no idiot.

Even if it had taken him a month to master the double knot. But it had been all smooth sailing after that.

In any case, at the advanced age of ten, no gangly teenager was going to look down his nose at him. Well, yes, they were, because Granite was taller than Rodney. But he wasn't going to successfully get away with telling Rodney what to do.

He didn't even let Jeannie do that. Not often. And she was his sister and therefore the third evil of the world. (The first being his mother and the second being the third grade teacher who had point-blank refused to let him pass up a grade even though he could prove he knew more than she did. Five to power of five was not twenty-five and he didn't care that she was the teacher, because there was no room for feelings and good tries in math. There were right answers and wrong answers. Five to the power of *two* was twenty-five. Anything else was wrong, and a mistakenly awarded teaching degree didn't change facts.)

A handkerchief was passed across the space between the beds.

Rodney took it automatically, looked at it, then back at the person who'd given it to him. The wooly-headed Czech sharing the dorm room with him. "What?"

"It is three hours later and you are getting spittle on me with your ranting against Mr. Brains Of A Rock. Please wipe your mouth."

"Very funny," Rodney said, but wiped his mouth anyway. "No one attractive noticed, did they?"

"Sadly, just me. Everyone else stopped listening after the first fifteen minutes. It is amazing how long you can go on without repeating yourself. Or getting a fist to the mouth"

Rodney glared at Wolf, but the older boy was smiling. "Well, it wasn't as if there was anything worth paying atttention to otherwise. Room assignments, blah blah blah, testing schedules, blah blah blah, orientation, blah blah blah. It's like they're letting our brains atrophy. I expected better from an elite institute of learning."

"Mmm. You would have final examinations on the second day perhaps?" Wolf's lips quirked in a small smile.

"They could have at least assigned us lab space," Rodney sulked. "As it is, I'm going to have to make do with what we have."

"Ah, yes, a personal computer in our room and a computer lab at the end of the hall. Such hardship." Wolf's hands twitched.

"You don't fool me," Rodney said, pointing at him. "You want your own space too."

"Yes," Wolf admitted, folding his arms, as if to remove the temptation to fiddle with invisible computer hardware. "It has been over three weeks since I left home to come here and I am tired of living out of my bag. But it is more than good enough for my first day."

"Three weeks?!" Rodney wasn't sure if he could endure three hours without being able to do something productive.

"First by train, then by ship. A long journey."

Rodney eyes him suspiciously. "You aren't rich or you wouldn't have gone the long way around and you'd have your own computer. So they brought you all the way from Siberia--"

Wolf rolled his eyes.

"--which means you must be really good."

Wolf smiled a little, like most people did when you gave them compliments, not that Rodney gave many of those.

Rodney's shoulders slumped a little as his mouth collapsed into an unhappy frown. Unlike Wolf, Rodney hadn't been plucked out of some cold war training camp gulag -- he was right in their backyard, in the same *time zone*, and he didn't get picked to come here until he had built that bomb. For once, the students here were going to be as smart -- maybe even smarter than he was -- and suddenly Rodney wasn't sure he liked that idea. It would be a new experience -- if it were even possible, of course.

"And you also," came quiet words from next to him.

Rodney looked up and met Wolf's eyes. Wolf wasn't looking down at him, wasn't mocking him or trying to take advantage of Rodney's moment of weakness (lapse in good sense). No, his eyes crinkled a little and he said, "It is obvious that you and I are the brightest we have met so far. If there are brighter, so much the better for us. There will be competition. Opportunities to improve ourselves."

He didn't tell Rodney that Rodney needed to shut up and prove he was worth his ego. He didn't say any of the horrible things going through the back of Rodney's head right now. He was sincerely, thoroughly grateful for that.

"You may have a point," Rodney admitted.

He didn't look up in time to catch the twinkle in Wolf's eyes that Rodney would later realize was a sure sign that the older man was about to tease him. And eventually deliberately try to elicit from the Czech.

"Yes, yes, it is clear that you are no Viper. Sharp-tongued perhaps, but with you, you have a big mooshy center inside that. No, Viper is not your name. Kitten perhaps?"

Rodney wasn't so old yet that he couldn't grab a pillow from the bed and hit Wolf over the head with it. Which he promptly did. While hoping that the school didn't put the initially chosen names down anywhere electronic. Because if they did, sooner or later, Wolf would learn that the name Rodney had been originally given upon arriving at the school had been nothing other than Chinchilla.

Even Kitten was better than that. Rodney had some respect at least for cats.

None at all for Mexican rat creatures or the personal space of the maniac who had just grabbed another pillow and lobbed it at his head.

"Die, evil oppressor of catly values!" Rodney yelled and grabbed that pillow to throw back.

"Big words from little man!" Wolf called at him, and Rodney knew he'd found something even better than a school.

He had found himself something he had never had before. A friend. 


End file.
